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An Adobe study found 28% of U.S. online shoppers like personalized ads, but most of those surveyed draw a line at giving away too much information on themselves. Still, the personalized ads are favored over banner ads, which 54% declared ineffective. "Banners have brought much of the worst characteristics of advertising -- being intrusive and manipulative. ... Consumers realize they are now in control and won't accept it," says David Edelman, McKinsey & Co.'s global co-leader for digital marketing and sales practice.

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Consumers watched 43% more digital videos in the second quarter of 2014 than in the same period last year, and nearly 60% of those views came from smartphones, according to an Adobe report. Advertisers also spent more on the medium during that period, with an average of two video ads shown per free video viewed.

Facebook ad clicks are up 70% year-over-year for the first quarter, while ad impressions have grown 40% in the same period, according to an Adobe report. Facebook also grew from Q4 2013 to Q1 2014, bucking the typical industry trend of first-quarter declines, which the report credits to in-application ads and its success with driving referral retail traffic. "Facebook's revenue per visit is continuing to grow when everyone else's went down," said Tamara Gaffney, an Adobe principal analyst.

A visit to a retail site via a Tumblr link is worth about $1.10, a 340% increase from last year and second only to Facebook among social media referrals, according to data from Adobe. Adobe added that Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest are generating more Web traffic, while Facebook referrals were down 15% year-over-year. "Tumblr is the dark horse of high-quality traffic," said Adobe Digital Index principal analyst Tamara Gaffney.

Marketers are seeing big increases in return on investment from social media advertising, according to Adobe's Social Intelligence Report for the third quarter, which found that Twitter has quadrupled its per-visitor revenue compared with last year and Facebook's click-thru rate has risen 171% over the same period. The report also maintains that Tumblr, Yahoo's recent acquisition, is undervalued by as much as 450%.